


Twelve on Trial

by GhostJ



Category: Doctor Who, 逆転裁判 | Gyakuten Saiban | Ace Attorney
Genre: And The Worst Present Award Goes To..., Bad Fic, Crossover, Gen, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, LIKE - CLOCKET'S NEVER SEEN ACE ATTOURNEY, OMG SO BAD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-03-02 23:44:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2830361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GhostJ/pseuds/GhostJ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ummm… So… ClocketPatch asked for a story where the main characters were Twelve’s eyebrows and this is what happened. She’s never read or seen anything to do with Phoenix Wright, but he’s just here for comedic timing (like in the games!).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twelve on Trial

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Clocketpatch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clocketpatch/gifts).



> LOL - I think this is the sort of fic you warned me about when you got me into Yuletide and you said NOT to write. It's like your prompts don't exist!
> 
> BAD FIC - WHY ARE YOU READING THIS?! And absolutely un-beta'd (I love her too much) :D

Nick could feel the sweat dripping down his face as the foreman finished reading out the charges. Not that that was new; he was rather used to starting trial feeling like a drowned rat defending a cat caught hiding under a pile of bloody feathers with a mouse in its mouth. But, he rather thought this one could take the cake. That being said, never before had the sweat pooled along his face, only to coalesce and float up in Zero-g. So this might indeed be new ground, or space, as it were.

“You might want to reign that in,” Nick’s client, the rather pretentiously named Doctor, said. “No, again – _I’m_ not your client, you leaking monkey. We’ve already been over this. Are you honestly Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney? Maybe you just stumbled into his office looking for your tree this morning? And how do you produce that _much_ moisture, you should be dead at this point. If you were human, you know, in 3 dimensions and all that, and breathing. I do think I’ve noticed you breathing. Clara! Have you noticed the leaking monkey breathing?”

Nick managed to tune out the Doctor’s insane babble successfully, if with some difficulty, and moved reflexively to fish out his handkerchief. He made to dab at his face, staring at the judge, persecutor, and spectators gazing up in amazement at the droplets of his sweat floating lazily into the courtroom’s air circulation.

“Don’t!” Clara, the Doctor’s companion – and it was so very eerie watching what was essentially Nick’s relationship with Maya played out in stereo – reached out and grabbed his hand, stopping the handkerchief en-route.

“Remember?” Clara hissed at Nick. She turned slightly so she blocked his view of the court and wiggled her eyebrows excitedly up and down. Even with the precaution, several of the spectators nearest to them shifted uncomfortably in their seats, sounding and looking like nothing so much as a clutch of disapproving maiden aunts. If maiden aunts were large, ambulatory, _carnivorous,_ hairy caterpillars. But _sentient_ hairy caterpillars, who had a judicial system similar enough to Earth’s for him to be commissioned (read kidnapped) to step in as lead defence.

“Oi, you two!” The Doctor scowled at them from the accused’s podium, and really, this was shaping up to be the toughest trial of Nick’s life. Not because of the aliens or the, likely unknown, local laws and legal proceedings, but because he’d never had to defend anyone who was so _clearly_ guilty before. Those eyebrows were threatening him right now with obvious intent to harm, no question about it. He could only imagine how terrifying it must be for the defendant, without his knowledge that the worst physical attack to come from those threats was likely dandruff.

From what Nick had gathered, the charges against his client, or, _er_ , clients, it had already been downgraded from attempted assault to uttering threats, or the closest alien equivalents, due to the perceived youth of the defendants. From Clara’s hurried translation of the Doctor’s rant, this was due to their relatively small size and apparent dependence on a host (i.e. the Doctor’s face) for locomotion.

The Doctor was still glowering at Nick, and at the courtroom in general, which wouldn’t do them any favours in sentencing. So Nick smiled as widely as he could, while keeping his eyebrows as still as possible, and said something he’d never thought to say, especially in a court of law.

“Doctor, can you stop looking at me like that? Your eyebrows are hardly putting on a good showing for the judge. _Please,_ request ask them to stay on their best behaviour.”

The Doctor’s face froze and Nick could see the eyebrows twitching in preparation for releasing a fully-fledged glare. Nick rather hoped the Doctor could restrain himself, since doing so would likely get them all killed, or perhaps shaven. The Doctor had been less than clear on that point.

“Our apologies Defender,” the Doctor growled. As the species they were dealing with seemed to have very little _verbal_ communication, tones of voice went completely ignored; meaning the Doctor’s growl, however much it communicated to Nick, would do nothing to jeopardise their case. Considering that the Doctor was quirking his eyebrows one at a time, in a locally acceptable apologetic gesture, Nick graciously refrained from telling him he looked like nothing so much as a lascivious magician.

Perhaps that was the most peculiar part, Nick though, since the Doctor really did seem to treat his eyebrows as separate individuals. Not _once_ had the Doctor tripped up during his defence, or cross-examination and, during both, he’d even managed to squish them together, somehow managing to impart the idea that they were _comforting_ each other. Heck, the persecution had even offered to cut the Doctor’s right eyebrow a deal, which it had apparently considered ferociously for several minutes. Then the Doctor’s eyebrows had glared so forcefully at the persecution that the judge had had to threaten to charge them as adults to bring the trial back to order.

Nick nodded at the Doctor in thanks, hoping to encourage more good behaviour, and moved, very carefully, to wipe his face, so as to not disturb his own eyebrows. The slow ruffling of the handkerchief caught his eye as he brought it up though.

“Ummm, Doctor?” Nick asked. He felt more sweat start to pool in his nervousness, and moved proactively to hook his ankle around the table leg.

“Yes? Why are you bothering me? Shouldn’t you be paying attention to the witness statement?” The Doctor jutted his chin out towards his eyebrows’ accuser at the other end of the hall.

“You said this is the only area on the planet that is Zero-G, right? There’s real gravity elsewhere?” Nick asked. Clara, he noticed with some approval, was relatively quick to pick up on his increasing nervousness and was inching closer towards him and the Doctor from her spot in the spectators’ gallery.

“Indeed! Fascinating really. The government decided years ago that increasing gravity would be an excellent deterrent to crime and increased it all across the planet’s surface. But indoors, everything is at Zero-G or close enough to it that you wouldn’t notice a difference with your ineffective monkey senses.” The Doctor seemed almost giddy with the chance to be the smartest person in the room and his eyebrows bounced up and down in excitement, which probably should have been illegal, if it wasn’t already.

“So, let’s say that you, not you, but a local you, wanted to kill someone. Say a judge,” Nick hazarded. He turned to fumble with the latch keeping the Doctor locked in the defence’s podium. “Getting to a place with Zero-G would likely help, right?”

“Certainly,” the Doctor assured him. “But you’d have to be an idiot to get arrested here. I mean, what if you’re found guilty before you’d kill him? Then you’d be killed,” – and Nick guessed that answered that question – “and really it would be annoying difficult. We’re so far away from the other participants it would make no sense at all to attempt it as a defendant. Did you send away for that law school certificate on your wall?”

Nick floated aside to let Clara shine a laser pointer at the latch on the Doctor’s podium, somehow causing the lock to spring open. She then reached inside and managed to manhandle the Doctor out of confinement, although he seemed uninterested in escape.

“But the trial,” the Doctor whined. His eyebrows, though, looked positively gleeful. “I haven’t been on trial in this face yet. I was looking forward to it.”

“Even if it means losing this trial,” Nick said, staring at the drama unfolding on the other side of the courtroom. “I’d rather not be present when your accuser finally decides to spray the judge with whatever they managed to sneak in.”

Nick didn’t feel he needed to stay to be involved in another trial and Clara seemed to feel the same way, if her constant repetition of “Running now Doctor? Running now, _Doctor_?!” was anything to go by.

“Ohhh,” the Doctor sounded almost approving. “Close range aerosol toxin. It will have killed the judge and all the guards by now and, with the Zero-G, since she’s the origin of the spray, she’ll be likely be safe. It’s a good choice, wouldn’t have worked at all outside, the toxin would have just fallen straight to the ground.”

“Now is not the time to be admiring the _murderer_!” Clara snapped. She pulled harder on his hand, obviously trying to drag him further away from the fracas, but was finding precious little purchase in the low gravity.

“Oh, will you stop that?” the Doctor snapped back, pulling his hand away and starting to frown again. “It’s not like we’re in any danger. This is going to end up as the most unsuccessful mass murder I’ve ever been a party to.”

Clara and Nick both starred at him and floated around to look at the other end of the room. Nick would admit, it did seem like plenty of guards were moving to confront the would-be murderer and even the judge seemed to have recovered from the attack.

“Human beings,” the Doctor said disparagingly. “You have such tiny brains, _but_ you do make some interesting chemicals. Of particular interest right now, NaCl, or salt, of which a great quantity can be found in-“

“Sweat”, Nick cut in. It earned him a dirty look from the left eyebrow, but he thought he was rather growing on the right.

“It does indeed seem that your nervousness is now paying off for the local populace. Your molecules are neutralising the toxin, keeping the average dose rather lower than fatal.” The Doctor seemed almost disappointed with the result and Nick wasn’t sure why. If the Doctor really wanted to go back on trial Nick could think of several places he could get arrested just for opening his mouth with his attitude.

“This is now a bit of a problem,” the Doctor continued. “Since there are going to be many more guards while we try to escape, which we should do now. You two were so quick to get us out of here that you opened the locks without authorisation. They’ll definitely have to kill us now. “

“Are you certain you don’t mean shave?” Nick asked. He’d still been holding out hope that he’d misunderstood the whole killing the guilty part. Also, he was starting to notice how, now that the fracas was over, it looked like more and more spectators and guards were turning towards them.

“Oh no, certain death.” The Doctor said.

“Can we please run then?” Nick said, flailing wildly in Zero-G to move towards the corner of the room the Doctor’s ship was lurking in. Clara it seemed had given up trying to coax the Doctor along and had already begun swimming for the box’s entrance.

The doctor sighed, but started moving along at a fair clip in what appeared to be a modified breast stroke.

“At least it’s not more _running_ ,” the Doctor observed, sounding slightly relieved. His eyebrows were in complete, if mostly silent, agreement.


End file.
